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POTD: Extra Space
When the vehicle is full, you need to utilize extra space. ~Vic
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Picture of the Day
Hans-Quinn 2022 TV Draft: Round Two-Pick Six-Firefly (2002-2003)
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Hanspostcard/Quinn Maddux has a TV draft challenge. This is my Round Two pick.
“You can’t take the sky from me.”
Ok. I will say it. I am a hopeless Sci-Fi geek. I could easily do this TV Draft with nothing but Sci-Fi. I led with Doctor Who because it, by far, has the longest tapestry in my life. I would venture to say that Firefly was the shortest…and, yes, I am a Browncoat. I had an extensive list of Sci-Fi choices but, chose these two, only, because I also wanted to touch on other genres including law enforcement, drama, comedy and a couple of cartoons. ~Vic
When this came out, it struck me as being very close to the original description given to the first Star Trek series…a western in space. Fox had already scored big with the X-Files, running from September 1993 to May 2002. Firefly debuted September 2002 and, I was front and center. I didn’t find out until later that the first episode that aired was not the first episode of the series. You can thank Fox executives for that mess-up. It went downhill from there.
Created by Joss Whedon (Executive Producer, Writer, Theme Composter & Director of three episodes), it starred:
★ Nathon Fillion as Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, the owner & Captain of Serenity, a Firefly-class, small transport spaceship. He is a former sergeant from the Battle of Serenity Valley, an Independent soldier in the war against the Alliance (a fusion of the last two superpowers, the US & China) in the year 2517.
★ Gina Torres as Zoë Alleyne Washburne, second-in-command aboard Serenity and Mal’s loyal corporal during the war. She is Wash’s wife.
★ Alan Tudyk as Hoban “Wash” Washburne, Serenity’s pilot and a bit jealous over his wife’s attachment to Mal. He is known for cracking jokes, even during horrible situations.
★ Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra, a Companion that is a blending of a courtesan, a geisha & a mistress. She has a very high social status and rents one of Serenity’s small shuttles. She & Mal are attracted to each other, dislike each other’s “jobs” and want to remain professional towards each other.
★ Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, a 6’4″ mercenary that acts dumber than he really is. He sends much of his income back to his mother. He is excellent in a fight, has an intense fear of Reavers and has an extreme dislike of Simon and his sister, River, as she attacked him with a knife.
Deviant Art
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★ Jewel Staite as Kaywinnet Lee “Kaylee” Frye, the ship’s adorable mechanic. With no formal training, she intuitively knows mechanical equipment. She routinely talks to Serenity and has a crush on Simon Tam.
★ Sean Maher as Simon Tam, a trauma surgeon (top 3% of his class) that became a fugitive after he snatched his sister, River, out of a government research facility. He struggles with his desire for Kaylee as his life revolves around his sister.
★ Summer Glau as River Tam, an intuitive child prodigy that the Alliance experimented on, leading to psychic abilities and combat training. She suffers from PTSD and has flashbacks from the experiments. She can be delusional, paranoid and violent without warning.
★ Ron Glass as Derrial Book, commonly referred to as Shepherd Book (a 24th century version of a pastor). A devout Christian, his background is unknown but, he has much knowledge that the average pastor would not have. He has a fairly high status with the Alliance and, though he objects to violence, he is skilled in combat. Quote: “…while the Bible is quite specific about killing, it is somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.” Book is the voice of reason, spirituality and conscience for the crew.
Fourteen episodes, with a two-hour pilot, were produced but, only 11 of them aired before being unceremoniously cancelled. The Browncoat Brigade started a postcard writing campaign to Fox, and UPN but, it ultimately failed. They continued to push for the DVD release and, in 2005, the feature film Serenity was released on September 30.
Trivia Bits:
♦ The real reason it was cancelled was that the FOX executives thought it was too dark (It was very dark).
♦ Whedon proposed a Firefly plotline in which Inara injected herself with a prophylactic solution, not a birth control but, a serum that would poison anyone who raped her. Whedon’s idea was that Inara would, then, be kidnapped and gang-raped but, that the rapes would take place offscreen and, the only sign of them would be a pile of her rapists later found dead. This plotline was nixed by the network and no version of it ever appeared on the show.
♦ Serenity’s engine room includes the center console from a Boeing 737.
♦ When Whedon created the show, he intended for it to run seven years.
♦ Between shots, the cast preferred to wait in the ship’s lounge, instead of their trailers/dressing rooms.
♦ The Alliance officer and soldier uniforms are leftovers from Starship Troopers (1997).
♦ The pistol-sized lever action gun Zoe wears on her hip is called a Mare’s Leg. It is a cut down Model 1892 Winchester, the same gun used by Steve McQueen in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958).
♦ Astronaut Steven Swanson is a Browncoat and brought his Firefly & Serenity DVDs with him on the Space Shuttle Atlantis for the STS-117 mission in June 2007.
♦ The Shuttle crew of the Endeavour is awoken at 4:14pm ET to The Ballad of Serenity, played for astronaut Robert Behnken.
♦ The DVDs are in the media collection on the ISS.
♦ There are actual Browncoat Balls, held all over the US. The first one was in 2004.
Firefly Opening Sequence
50 Quotes
Our Witch
Too Much Hair
Reboot? Yes, Disney Sucks (Sorry for the ads)
Chris Thomas: A Progress Report 2013
A Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files
Introduction
The Galaxy Song [1]
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And, things seem hard or tough
And, people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And, feel that you’ve had quite enough
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet
That’s evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy, itself, contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle to sixteen light years thick
But, out by us it’s just three thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And, our galaxy is only one of millions and billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute
And, that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And, pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space
Because, there’s bugger all down here on Earth
I have included Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song for the same reasons that I used it as the frontispiece for The Human Soul, published back in 2007. The reason is to show, in a non-serious way, how little we really understand about our Universe, our solar system, the Earth and ourselves. Humans have become so focused down onto the minutiae of our day-to-day lives that we forget that we have a greater purpose beyond being a “wage slave”. The other main problem we seem to have developed over the past few years is that we only see the world around us in very small “bites”…if it isn’t immediately in front of us on our computer screen, we don’t consider it and, as soon as we change the website, we have forgotten what we read on the last web page. We seem to have forgotten all about context and history.
Mr. Idle’s little ditty also highlights another problem we have. We see ourselves as being very small and this makes us insecure. Added to which are the determined efforts by the “Elite” to keep us in a permanent state of fear so that we only think about our lives in reference to whatever is currently making us afraid. Given that we do not understand who, and what, we actually are, how we are deliberately kept in a state of fear and, we do not remember what our true place is within this Universe, is it any wonder that people have begun to look for help from beings, and places, beyond our solar system?
The line in the song: “And pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space…” seems to have caught a great many people’s interest and, they are looking to other races to come in and save them from themselves. However, the Velon, and all of their misleading disguises, should not be seen as being “intelligent life”. If we properly understood ourselves, and our place in current Universal history, we would know, absolutely, that we have all of the information and the tools we need already with us here on Earth. We already have everything we need to solve our problems as part of our fundamental make up. We have just forgotten that we are so much more than we have been propagandised into believing.
The Situation Since 1996
December 21st 2012 was a critical day in a series of recent critical days that began in 1996. To try and re-tell our history, as recorded in the Akashic, at this point, would be pointless. This is fully covered in my books. But, some historic connections need to be made in order to explain the significance of 1996 and the critical days that followed up to the present. To understand the present, you have to place it into its historical context, otherwise, what is happening now cannot be understood properly.
The Earth revolves on its own axis. The Earth orbits around the Sun. The Sun travels around its own orbit, travelling at 200 Km/hr. On its orbit, the Sun travels through many regions of our galaxy and, every 26,250 years, the Sun aligns with the center of the galaxy. With this galactic alignment comes a new burst of energy that can be used to rejuvenate the energies within our solar system, if the planetary consciousnesses choose to so do. This 26,250 year cycle is the one referred to in the ancient calendar systems, the most well known of which is the Mayan Calendar.
We began to enter the central galactic energy stream a few years ago but, the energies, as far as their potential influence is concerned, reached its peak between the 29th of October 2011 and the 21st of December 2012. This is why these dates have significance. This is why human plans (The Human Plan) were timed to reach their conclusions at this time…to take maximum advantage of the fresh energies arriving from the galaxy center. This is the Mayan 6th Sun.
To continue reading (it’s eight pages), download the PDF version HERE.
[Note: This PDF was originally posted on the One-Vibration Forum Blog on July 6, 2013.]
Footnote
[1] The Galaxy Song was written by Eric Idle. Music by Eric Idle and John Du Prez. Taken from Monty Python’s film The Meaning of Life, I did attempt to contact Eric Idle, or his agents, to obtain copyright approval to reproduce the lyrics here but, unfortunately, I could not find any way of contacting him. The lyrics are available on many websites. You can also watch Eric Idle and the Monty Python team perform the song on YouTube.